OK, I have a couple of mad scientist characters who are planning to kidnap someone. In order to keep her from escaping, they want to sever nerves in her arms in such a way as to cause finger paralysis that would stop her from opening a large wooden gate. I need her to survive this - either they deliberately do it in such a way as to cause minimal bleeding, or she has bleeding but it's not so severe that another character won't be able to save her by simple first aid. So, any of you with medical knowledge, which nerve is the best target? Both the medial and radial nerves, if severed, should affect the thumb, right? Which of those two would be easier for two people with medical knowledge but not much equipment to sever without too severe of blood loss? The victim needs to survive at least a day.
Well, there are three nerves controlling the hand. The medial would probably be best for your purposes except that it's not easily accessible. The other two don't have much control over musculature. Perhaps a paralytic drug?
You can always fiddle with the Cerebellum to cause paralysis in motor movement. I just got an idea about a killer who asks people online about ways he can paralysis his victims.
Hi, Sounds like a strange way to stop someone escaping. Simply lock the lever, stick the prisoner in hand cuffs or what have you. Even without thumb control if you have two hands to push together you could turn something. A paralytic drug would be a better option if you really wanted to go down the road of disabling your captive. Or a knockout gas. Cheers, Greg.
OK, here's the setup, in detail. They're going to feed the captive to a couple of vampires. Problem is, one of the vampires is mentally disabled and the other is not going to want to kill anyone, and will help the captive escape if she can. The vampires are kept in by a spell, which won't have any effect on a human. There's also a wooden gate, with a latch - to get out from inside you have to reach through the slats to pull the latch. They also want to prevent her from making a makeshift stake, which one of their previous captives did (fortunately he didn't know where the heart is on a vampire). The previous captive had his Achilles tendons cut and couldn't reach the latch. From what I've read, I'm thinking maybe injections. Apparently if you inject something in the wrong spot you can hit a nerve. I was thinking maybe two separate injections to stick blood on the medial and ulnar nerves, since as far as I understand direct contact with blood is toxic to nervous tissue. How plausible is that?
You could feasibly break your hand, damage your nerves, and not have access to surgery needed to repair them. I broke my hand and have minor nerve damage, which prevent me from stretching my pinky and ring finger on one hand into fairly useless position, and doesn't really effect me unless I try to stretch my hand out awkwardly in that way -- I simply can't do it. It's real simple. A badly broken hand can cause nerve damage that makes a hand useless without surgery. There would be a lot of broken bones, which would heal back wrong, impeding use of the hand.
